What Trans People Are Really Saying Online

Month: March 2015

How often in media stories about MTF trans people using public accommodations for women do we see the same basic narrative: trans people have always felt these feelings for a long time, their feelings are not sexual or fetishistic, this isn’t a way to let sick or twisted men into women’s spaces. Indeed, for most trans people, this is undoubtedly the case, but the problem lies in saying that there are no trans-identified people intent on using women’s spaces for fetishistic purposes.

You can see the result of this thinking in media coverage the current Planet Fitness case. The “trans woman” at the center of the Planet Fitness situation, “Carlotta Sklodowska,” is a male-identified fetishist who adopted a creepy, racist pseudo-Eastern European woman accent on his Facebook and liked posting objectifying, ultra-sexualized comments on fitness photos of women. Women are portrayed as crazy harpies for daring to warn other women about someone who is a serious creep. Even though several actual transgender people, including Zoey Tur, specifically said that this person was a fetishistic crossdresser and not trans (and therefore shouldn’t have been protected by transgender protection policies or laws), those trans people have been told to shut up by prominent activists and have had their roles as media spokespeople called into question.

But is the distinction between a trans-identifying person and a fetishist always so clear? When women are being told worldwide that we must accept XY-chromosomed, fully fertile people with penises in our changing rooms, we need to know whether the narrative of “this isn’t sexual, I just need to pee” is really all there is to it.

We here at Transgender Reality decided to investigate.

In this post, one transgender-identified male asks how he can stop having erections every time he dresses like a woman in public. The overwhelming response by the community?

Dress as a woman more, and it’ll probably get better. So this is one thing women can expect to be dealing with in the months and years to come: men dressing as women and entering women’s spaces deliberately to “desensitize” themselves to their sexual feelings. Is this a service women should be required to provide to men–validation of their “woman-ness” even as they stand there with their erections simply from wearing “female clothes”? Is the accommodation of these men through their desensitization process something all women and girls should be subjected to?

For that matter, how long is the average desensitization period? Women need to know these things, since we are now supposed to accept the “trans woman” experience as female. If this is so normal, talk more about it, trans activists. How many weeks, months, years will you be getting erections when you put on a bra or enter a changing room?

In case you wonder whether this is common, here are a few links to sort you out. In each link, the comments talk about just how common this is. No one says “this is vile, you’re not a real trans person, get out.” So in case you had any illusions about the trans community policing its own, and making sure that only people who just feel very sad about not having the opposite sex’s body get to use opposite sex facilities, rather than allowing fetishists as well, think again.

Note how this person acknowledges that he has a fetish, and feels like he’s being “a girl” for the wrong reasons. What advice does he receive? That his happiness is the only thing that matters, even when he admits getting “so turned on he’s scared”:

Being constantly turned on by “wearing pretty girl clothes” is great! And apparently the purpose of pronouns is sexual gratification:

Or how about this person, who wants to be “pinned down and raped”, “forced to suck cock”, and “get caged and turned into a sexy little fuck-cow”, and who states that his fetishes are all “directly related to me becoming a girl”.

No worries though, the commenters assure him, most women have these fantasies, it’s totally common!

These are the people women are supposed to be okay with sharing bathrooms and dressing rooms with, and if someone complains they must be a horrible transphobe. Disclaimer: nobody is saying that all, or even most, trans people are this way. But some definitely are, by their own admission. And we’re apparently not allowed to point this out, without being called TERFs, transphobic, or bigots. And women are apparently not allowed to be skeptical about sharing private spaces with people who get so turned on they’re “scared” by any kind of “female” items or settings, even by female pronouns.

“Smile more”. Because apparently you aren’t truly a woman if you have bitchy resting face.

This is just one post, and it’s full of stereotypes about how men and women act. This is a recurring theme in these communities, and one that we will be revisiting again and again in this blog. Many people seem to think that trans people are all about breaking down gender stereotypes, and “smashing the binary”, while in reality many of them are extremely preoccupied with conforming to strict gender roles.

As a side note, it’s curious that there are so many of these questions in online trans communities, when the narrative that has become standard in the last few years is that trans people are, and have always been the sex they identify as. If these people are women, why do they need to “practice walking and posing like women?”

He’s not unhappy with his male body, in fact he explicitly says he’s happy with it. He reports having thoughts about becoming female as a kid, and of pretending to have boobs. He also notes that he feels like he can communicate better with girls.

User Chel_of_the_sea advices him to look into it, and advises that the childhood memories can be “evidence” that there is something to it.

A few days later, the same kid posts again, stating that “Lately I’ve been feeling dysphoria with varying levels of intensity”, and suggests three possibilities for what this might mean:

2. I’m truly androgynous, and I’m being torn between being male and being female.

3. I’m truly male, and I am taking this harmless questioning too far.

He then presents what he feels is “evidence” for each of these options:

Note that he simultaneously states that he truly is female and that he wants to be female. No explanation of what being female means to him. Note also the gender stereotypes: he apparently thinks that knitting is an activity that can only be enjoyed by females. Most noteworthy however, is the statement that he has gone from being “totally comfortable” in his body, to experiencing feelings of no longer “feeling secure as a male”.

He continues with presenting evidence for the second possibility: being “truly androgynous”:

“Varying in my masculinity and femininity”, or “having a personality that isn’t a cardboard stereotype” as we could also call it. Again the gender stereotypes crop up.

Finally he lays out what he considers evidence of the third possibility, him actually being male and just confusing himself:

Note how he says that he can no longer imagine living the rest of his life as male after being exposed to these ideas, and how he has begun to be “weirded out” by seeing himself in a mirror. And again, a bunch of gender stereotypes, illustrating his immature view of what men and women are like (which for a 14 year old isn’t surprising).

Of the replies he gets, not one calls him out on his blatant gender stereotypes. No one asks him what he means by “feeling female”. What he gets instead is this:

Someone who vaguely says “you sound just like me”.

Another instance of the phenomenon covered in this post, the idea that the very act of being unsure of your gender identity makes you trans.

“You sound trans to me”

“You are probably not cis if you think all of those things”

It wouldn’t be a “am I trans” post if someone didn’t mention hormones!

Please listen to me when I say that this is not a choice, and it’s not something I can change. It is not a phase; it will not go away; it will only get worst if ignored; it will eventually kill me if I keep it in.

I may be biologically a boy, but I am truly a girl.

(…)

In terms of wanting to be female, not just acting like one, I can remember events such as dreams and daytime fantasies from as early as three or four, upwards to about 10 years old. They got pretty intense at times, and I can share them with you later if you like (they don’t translate very well to paper). The reason they stopped at about 10 was basically because gender conditioning that dictated that I must act as if I were masculine got in the way of my real identity. What’s more it made no sense that I would want to be feminine, since I wasn’t gay and I certainly wasn’t biologically female – so I tried to stop. For the most part, it worked, but hiding my true identity was not an act that would last forever. It wasn’t until recently that I realised all this consciously though, so I basically went through my pre-teen years and into the start of my teenage ones believing that there was something wrong with me for wanting to be a girl, repressing the feelings, pretending they were never there in the first place, putting on a phony masculine front, hating myself for it, pretending that everything was okay, and repeating the cycle. I know this may be a bit of a shock to you as I rarely seem truly upset, and when I am it’s usually about something trivial and goes away within a couple of hours at most. This was a different kind of sadness though; one which I was able to hide reasonably well, especially from myself, and pile other feelings on top of to keep it out of sight. But it was always there.

Perhaps puberty helped me come to the realization of my true gender identity, or perhaps it was just that my understanding of my life grew large enough for me to be able to see this pattern, question it, and come to the conclusion that I am transgender. And of course having access to resources about transgenderism, mainly websites by older and more experienced people who have been through it themselves, as well as doctors and medical professionals, only helped accelerate this process.

So what do you do about a transgender child? Just as you cannot “cure” your child if they are gay, you cannot “cure” a transgender and make them happy living as their biological gender. Doing so will not end well, for you or for them. Nearly half of all adolescent transgenders have attempted suicide, and are supposedly eight times more likely to do so if they are rejected by their families, or forced to live as their birth gender as opposed to their true one.

So the real solution, however difficult it may be, is to let them express themselves as their true gender, for life (let me stress that this does not go away). This entails a lot of things, some of which are purely social while others are physical. The checklist varies depending on the person but usually will include for Male-to-Female (MtF) transgenders:

* Therapy

* Voice training

* Buying new clothes and changing their appearance

* Choosing a new name

* Taking T-blockers to limit testosterone levels (this is a must)

* Taking supplementary estrogen (usually only when 16+, depends on the specific case)

* Various corrective surgeries, these are usually only done after 10+ years of living is a female, if they are done at all

Notice first how he twice talks about suicide, which reminds us of this post. Suicide is seen as the inevitable outcome of not transitioning. This in a boy who only days before was happy with his body, who has not even talked to a therapist yet. The only people he has talked to about his feelings are people on the internet, many of them much older than him. And all of them are people who define themselves as transgender. No doubt there exist people who have had these kinds of feelings, but who have realized that they are happy as their birth sex. But such people don’t hang out in transgender websites, and thus this kid isn’t reading about their experiences at all.

He also talks about his childhood experiences with “acting as a female” (remember that this is a kid with extremely immature and stereotypical views of what men and women typically do). Suddenly these memories have become a lot more detailed and he sees them as a much more significant than he did the first time he posted.

His letter also contains a list of things necessary to “express one’s true gender”, including taking hormone blockers and estrogen, and surgery.

We’ve seen the same type of story before on this blog. Young person who does not fit into stereotypical gender roles starts reading certain trans communities, and within a very short period of time they no longer like their bodies and are planning extensive body modifications and threatening suicide.

As adults, we know that people on the internet aren’t always who they claim to be, and that they don’t always have our best interests in mind. For young people, like teenagers, who can be both naive and impulsive, this is not always immediately obvious. Predatory males exist all over the internet, also in the transgender communities. We have already seen that there are plenty of young teens posting to these communities, and after being exposed to them for a while, many of them start wanting to take hormones. How convenient that there are older people (males) available to offer their assistance!

The person in the first two screenshots is an adult male, and a moderator of several trans and LGBT subreddits.

The same 42 year old male offering a 13 year old to come to his apartment in exchange for prescription medication.

Another example of creepy behavior: an 18 year old posts their picture in r/transpassing. An adult male makes this comment:

The poster also get this reply:

This is the advice given to a suicidal 15 year old desperate for hormones. This commenter is an adult:

Other posters try to get the 15 year old to disclose personal information like location: (this commenter is also an adult)

Here we see a male in his early 20s offering hormones to a 16 year old:

This is just some of the behavior that goes on in the open. We can only imagine what goes on via private messages.

This post will only have screenshots and quotes, no links, due to the age of the poster featured here.

A boy who claims to be twelve years old posts to a transgender sub-reddit:

A year ago he was definitely not trans, then after researching the topic online, he is unsure but thinks he might be. He posts a long laundry list of things that makes him think he’s trans:

From not feeling like “a girl trapped in a boy’s body” to “realiz[ing] this might be the case”. Envious of girls, “from their body parts, to their nature and characteristics”. Suicidal.

Fascinated with “change”, whether is’t transforming into a dragon, a woman, or “an apple”.

He’s fine with being male, but, no doubt because he’s been reading a lot of trans stuff online, he feels sure that the desire to become female will get worse. Notice also the naive beliefs in gender roles: thinking that not wishing to become a strong body builder makes him less male. Thinking that wanting to learn to knit and sew and liking animals is in some way significant to his “gender identity”. Thinking that playing video games as a girl is a “major pointer” of being transgender.

What do the commenters say?

“You are probably trans”

“If puberty doesn’t sound appealing to you, you should take hormone blockers”. As if puberty sounds so appealing to young kids. The commenters also give specifics on what to say to healthcare providers to achieve this:

More planting of the idea of puberty blockers:

The next commenter brings upidea that “the more masculine you get the more you get dysphoria”. This commenter, who is only 13 years old themselves, are eager to have more people like themselves to relate to.

And finally, a 30 year old male chimes in:

The next day, the twelve year old makes four new posts, asking among other things if he will look feminine with hormone therapy and whether he will “pass well”, He also say now that he’s “80-100% sure” that he is transgender”.

He gets told again how important it is to take blockers, and that only blockers will let him “make it out unscathed”. The second commenter is an adult male who transitioned late in life, who emphasizes how important it is to transition early.

“The younger you start the better”:

More talk of how vital it is to start early:

“As long as you get puberty blockers, grow out your hair, and start HRT when it’s possible, it’s all good”:

It took one day to go from being ok with being male, to being 80-100% sure he is trans. The majority of the replies he is getting focuses on how important starting early is, and some of them feature exact quotes he’s supposed to parrot to healthcare providers with the explicit goal to get prescribed hormone blockers and then hormones. Both serious medications that, if taken without going through his natural puberty, will sterilize him. No one asks him why he wants to be female or why he envies girls. No one talks about how it’s normal to wish we were someone else.

One day later, he posts this:

He can’t wait 5 years or he will go insane or kill himself. It’s hard to believe this kid would have gotten ideas like these on his own accord. The “helpful” commenters each push a tiny bit, each provide a single drip of “male puberty will ruin you”, “get on blockers”, “the younger you start the better”. And not only in the comments directed at this boy, comments of the same type are all over reddit and other websites, and young people questioning their identity can read them all. It reinforces their beliefs again and again.

To parents whose children tell you they are transgender: GET THEM OFF THE INTERNET! Websites like reddit is full of people reinforcing belief systems like the one we see in this blog. Some are well-meaning, some are creeps. But few of them seem interested in helping kids figure out why they feel the way they do, and none seem to consider that there might be other things going on in the life of kids that make them feel inadequate in their bodies.

We have seen in previous posts that there is a push to “diagnose” people who question their gender as transgender, and there is a pervasive narrative that the only way to treat this condition is through transitioning. In the majority of cases, this means taking hormones: For females, testosterone; for males, some type of testosterone blocker plus estrogen. This is often referred to as “HRT”, “hormone replacement therapy”. For young people who have not finished puberty, it can also mean to take drugs that block their body’s natural hormones, so-called “blockers”.

In many online trans communities, starting to take hormones is seen as a way to decide whether you are transgender or not. The idea is that if you are really transgender, taking hormones should make you feel better. If you are not, it should presumably make you feel worse, or the same as before.

In this post, a 17 year old asks for advice regarding taking hormones, mentioning this idea of the “trial period”.

Im 17 pre-everything possible mtf.I have heard that for a lot of people hormones were the factor that made them sure of their gender identity and was wondering if a short-term small dose trial period of hrt for confused and questioning people was at all common practice. Im a minor so i still need parental approval but would a doctor even give me a referral?

The very first commenter shares their experiences, saying “I did HRT as a kind of confirmation”. Notice how the commenter admits to lying to their health care provider in order to get a prescription.

There is discussion about which effects of HRT are permanent and which are reversible. The original poster, who is 17 years old and not even sure he is transgender, shrugs away the possibility of permanent infertility.

He gets encouraged to “do it” by another commenter, who also gives specific advice on which medication to take.

More discussion of the “trans test” in this post, where a commenter admits that sometimes the commitment to do something about a condition can trigger a placebo effect. However, in the same post they claim that the effects from estrogen couldn’t have been placebo because they “surprise[d] me every single time i injected”.

This commenter attributes a sudden liking of taking care of their hair and skin and being able to “feel colors” to hormones:

More praise for hormones:

We see the idea rehashed again and again that taking HRT is a way of confirming your trans-ness, together with the constant praise of how great hormones can make you feel. In fact, the people in these communities are often quite quick to suggest hormones to young questioners.

I’m a 17 year old gay human of the male variety. That is, I’ve got a schlong. And that’s where my maleness stops. My behaviour as a child could be seen as a gender identity issue, or just plain old gayness. I used to play with my sister’s toys and dress up in her clothes. I’ve never identified with guys, I hate most male related activities. (Sports, cars, etc.) Through my preteen years I constantly dressed up, always assuming female roles in play. As a teenager, I have dressed in female clothes a few times, and it felt much more natural to me. I’m fairly “straight acting” in that I don’t flap about much when I talk and I’m not too sassy, I’m not like the gay stereotype. Around close friends however I am extremely flamboyant. Anyway, back to the question, am I trans? Reasons why I think I am: •I feel more comfortable in female clothes. •When I visualise my future, I see myself as a female. •I feel like I identify more with females.

Reasons why I don’t think I’m trans: •I don’t have the stereotypical hatred for my male body, sure I have had issues withwith self confidence etc but I’ve never felt like my junk was alien. •These feelings don’t overwhelm my brain. They’re subtle, niggling at the back of my mind.

This is a gay male who is extremely preoccupied with stereotypical gender roles. What do people suggest to him?

Try hormones!

Try hormones!

The problem with using any kind of medication as a diagnostic tool is that there is no way of knowing how much of the effect is due to placebo. And especially problematic is the tendency for online trans communities to advice people to start taking hormones completely on their own, without medical supervision. Since you usually can’t “just try” prescription medications, they give each other advice on how to circumvent the medical practitioners and obtain the medications on their own.

Watch as they tell a suicidal 15 year old how to obtain hormones without his parents knowledge and without medical supervision:

They tell him to omit mentioning his suicidal thoughts to counselors:

When a 14 year old posts wanting advice on becoming more feminine, this is the advice they get:

(note to readers: we are not linking directly to this post to protect the poster’s privacy).

“If you really want them there are ways of getting them”:

They get told they’ll pass once they start “DIY” (do it yourself) hormones:

In another post, the same kid gets told to “DIY secretly”, by befriending an adult transgender person in their area.

A fourteen year old kid befriending adults for favors. What could possibly go wrong? Taking prescription medication without medical supervision, what could possibly happen?

HRT is seen as not only necessary treatment for transgender feelings, but it is also a diagnostic tool, and one that people are encouraged to try out on their own. What happens when HRT does not make someone feel better though? Does that mean the person wasn’t really trans?

I’m a couple of months into HRT, and I’m feeling almost worse than I did before I started. I look terrible, I hate everything about myself. People keep telling me that I look good, or that they love my eyes, or my hair, or whatever the fuck else, and I don’t believe them, and not believing them makes me feel worse than if they said nothing.

It gets better, right? I’ll stop crying and snapping at my friends? I’ll feel good about myself maybe at some point?

At no point does anyone suggest to any of these posters that maybe they are actually not trans and that maybe HRT is the wrong choice for them. It’s always “wait”, “try more”, “change your dose”, “hang in there”.

This is the huge problem with using a medication as a diagnostic tool without medical supervision, and it’s a recipe for disaster. First you create a narrative where any sort of questioning of your feelings about gender roles or your body means that you are trans. Then you plant the idea that being trans is something that needs a specific type of medical treatment, and you actively encourage people to experiment with this medical treatment to “see if it’s right for them”. If you’re truly trans it will make you feel awesome! Then when people feel worse instead of better, suddenly that’s not proof of not being trans at all, it’s just proof that they need to take HRT longer or adjust their dose.

In previous posts in this blog we have seen how gender stereotypes play a big role in the narrative of many transitioners. Liking stereotypically feminine things or wanting long hair is seen as significant markers of internal “gender” rather than aspects of personality. There are other types of narratives that lead to someone deciding they are trans. One we will call the sexual narrative, the other one we will call the jealousy narrative. The sexual narrative will be described in more detail in later posts.

Being jealous of women and girls is something that comes up often in the narratives of transitioners. Sometimes the jealousy focuses on physical aspects of being female, such as breasts, genitals or being “allowed” to act and dress in specific ways.

Another common cause of jealousy is that women are perceived to have it “better” or “easier”. This attitude, which is prevalent among people who call themselves “men’s rights activists”, is also not uncommon among transgender people online.

Male privilege is nothing, when you’re a girl people open doors for you!

Males are the ones who are oppressed, females have tons of advantages!

There are many people spending a lot of time in online trans communities who do not have an emotionally healthy or mature perspective on what it means to be female. Regardless of whether one agrees with a lot of the transgender politics, most people would agree that someone who is unable to leave the house because seeing women makes them too angry are not in a healthy place, whether they decide to transition or not.